In the overnight session the grains bounced sharply with corn up 4 ½ cents, soybeans up 11 ¼ cents and wheat up 6 ¼ cents after falling during yesterday’s trade session. Precipitation is still expected in the northern part of Brazil’s growing region which will help reduce some of the dry areas. Actual precipitation in Northern Brazil currently runs 28 percent below normal over the last 60 days and 65 percent below normal over the last 30 days.
There were a number of tenders over the last day with Jordan’s state grain buyer issuing two international tenders to purchase 100,000 metric tons of hard wheat and 100,000 tons of animal feed barley. Iraq also issued a 50,000 metric ton tender for wheat and Egypt’s GASC announced a tender for 55,000-60,000 metric tons of wheat. We will keep a close watch over these tender results for signs that U.S. wheat is gaining competitiveness on the global market.
Yesterday, USDA/NASS announced their monthly crop reports for the winter wheat states. Of the states that reported the condition of winter wheat four reported declines in the good-to-excellent rating with the most notable decline in Colorado which fell to 38 percent compared to 62 percent G/E last month. Two states showed improvement in their winter wheat conditions.
Export inspections were strong last week for wheat and soybeans but analysts were disappointed with the corn number. Corn only recorded 661,675 metric tons inspected compared to expectations of 750,000-900,000 metric tons. Wheat performed in line with the high side of analyst expectations recording 394,029 metric tons while soybeans beat analyst expectations by a large margin showing 1.69 million metric tons inspected for export.
